Brad
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: some background on the street wise and tough character of Brad, a bit of a character sketch.
1. Chapter 1

Brad. He didn't go to that school, didn't go to any school. He walked around with that scowl on his face, dirt in his hair, a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Sold drugs. Lived on the street sometimes. He'd been mugged and jumped enough to know that he better have a gun, he'd been threatened enough to know that he'd better be the one who is threatening. Life was down to survival for Brad.

His parents were dead to him. They were still alive in some fashion, he was sure. His mom drinking her vodka gimlets and his dad cheating on her, sleeping around with those women with the dyed blond hair that looked yellow and too much eye make-up.

He liked that girl, though. The nice blond who went to the school near the corners he worked on. She smiled at him real sweet and nice. She spoke to him in that little clear voice and he felt almost worthwhile. It had been years since he felt that way. So he came to see her and tried to be nice even though he pretty much forgot how.

Sleeping outside made him feel cold. Made him jump at every little noise. The first time he ever slept on the street was after his dad kicked him out. He'd had it with being hit so he hit back, and the change in the anger on his father's face was extraordinary. The backhand across his face nearly busting his nose and then he said, "Brad, get the fuck out," He was more than happy to oblige.

The first time he'd ever done crystal meth was in this abandoned building with a friend of a friend, and he liked how he felt for once. For once.

He came to the girl's school to see her and the look on his face prevented most of the teachers from talking to him. He was beyond lost and they could see. He was beyond anything except talking to his new friend who was a girl, tucking her hair behind her ear, kissing her cheek. She smiled at him, thinking she could find him.

The first time he shot up heroin was in the back of a junked car, and the kid with him pulled the turniquet tight around his arm and found the vein. Brad felt it travel through his blood stream and hit his brain and he was relaxed.

He called that substitute teacher a bitch and didn't care about the hurt look on her face and the way she covered up that hurt look. Didn't care that the nice blond girl he liked looked a little scared and hurt when he said that. Didn't care that much. Then he ordered her to come with him and she did and he felt that it was right, almost. He should be the one in control.

The first time someone beat him was when he slept in the park and woke up to the pain of a shattered cheekbone and bleeding kidneys. They stole all his money and all his drugs and he had to drag himself to a hospital, spitting up blood and pissing blood and he was afraid, for a brief moment, that he might not be okay. The hospital staff looked at him with the kind of pity that makes him want to kill someone but he gritted his teeth and didn't say anything, let them give him the pain killing drugs he definitely needed.

Sometimes he wanted to stop this life of selling drugs and running and hurting people first before they hurt him. And he called his nice blond girlfriend a bitch and despite the crestfallen look he punched her and despite the scared look and the flinching away from him he wasn't sorry.

The last time he saw his mother she was slurring her speech and holding onto the corner of the bar and telling him she loved him. He narrowed his eyes at her because she was lying, because she loved the drink in her hand and the expensive clothes on her back.

His girlfriend with the shoulder length light blond hair and blue/green eyes forgave him for hitting her because he promised it would never never happen again. That was lie and he knew it. But it fooled her and she kissed him and put the flowers he stole for her in a vase of water and she let him fuck her and he told himself he would really try not to hit her again.

The first time he sold drugs was when his father kicked him out and he had extra, and he told the kid to tell his friends where they could get some good stuff. He worried about jail. Small time street dealers who were also users went to jail, he knew that. He was afraid of what happened to people in jail.

The first time he ever snorted coke was at a party in some guy's loft, and he snorted it through a rolled up hundred dollar bill on a little square mirror and he felt a rush of energy and confidence.

The first time he ever pointed his gun at someone was when he got mugged one night, tackled from behind and he fell to the gritty sidewalk and rolled over, pulled the gun out and said, "I'll kill you motherfucker, so you better get the fuck out," The guy pissed himself and took off and Brad felt, for the first time, powerful and like someone not to mess with.

His blond girlfriend was looking at him with reproach and he itched to just punch her but he didn't. Held his hands in rigid fists at his sides. He wouldn't hit her. He loved her, he did. He knew he did.


	2. Chapter 2

The blond girlfriend's name was Megan and she watched him sleep. Watched the easy rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers curled toward his palm. When he was asleep the scowling expression disappeared and she could see someone sweeter. She wanted him to be sweet, to be protective of her, to be almost considerate. She thought she wanted that. But all the boys who were really that way bored her. All the boys who wore such clean clothes and studied hard and held the doors, they were insufferable.

She listened to the coffee brew at this stranger's house and watched Brad sleep. She didn't know if you could call him her boyfriend. But he was something. She didn't know why the sudden flares of his anger scared her and excited her at once. She didn't know what it was in the danger that she found exhilarating, but it was something.

He did things she would never do, maybe that was a part of it. He had disowned his parents as they had him. She could never leave her parents in spirit that way. Even next year when she headed for college, she'd still be tied to them. Brad was on his own, answered to no one but himself.

"Hey," he said, half sitting up, smiling at her. The smile was sleepy and slow and broke her heart. His eyes, caught between green and brown, fascinated her. The long lashes. His full lips. His scratchy school boy voice. She swallowed hard, smiled back.

"Hey," she said, tucking the stray blond strands behind her ear, running her tongue along her teeth. She could smell the coffee, cinnamon hazelnut, and it filled the small apartment.

It was Sunday and school weighed on her mind as she sipped her coffee and watched Brad sip his. She drank hers with one spoonful of sugar and a splash of cream. He had poured sugar into his coffee until her eyes widened.

"Having some coffee with your sugar?" she said, and he narrowed his eyes for a second, a shadow of the scowl. Then the look cleared and he smiled his wide smile at her.

He shook out a cigarette from the pack in the pocket of his jeans and lit it up, not caring if the kid who lived in this apartment allowed people to smoke in it. He lived by his own rules. As he pulled the smoke into his lungs and exhaled it in one long steady stream she envied him because he wasn't worrying about school or anything. He had a freedom she didn't have, would never have. She could only look at it through the bars of her cage.

He looked at the shine of her blond hair through his smoke, and the worry he was always filled with was invisible to her. He needed a fix of some kind. Preferably heroin but he'd take whatever he could get. He was not a purist with his substances. He'd swallow, shoot, or inhale them all.

"Want to do something today?" she said, and her voice was almost shy. He looked over at her. Clear blue eyes, straight blond hair. What did this girl see in him? He couldn't figure it out. And he wanted to do something. But he wanted to get high first.

"Yeah," he said, crushing his cigarette against the glass ashtray, standing up and kissing her cheek. It felt electric to her.

"I do, but I have to go and do something first," he said, and ignored the crushed look on her face. She wasn't good at hiding things. Not like he was. But it didn't matter. What he wanted and what he needed mattered. It had been that way a long time.

Outside, the air crisp and clear, he headed toward downtown. He had enough money for a fix, for a hit. Just one. But one was all he needed. The gun was cold against his skin, tucked into his waistband. He could feel the money in the bottom of his pocket. Closed his eyes and saw Megan's devastated look she couldn't even begin to try and hide.


	3. Chapter 3

He went to the run down apartment building, the one with the busted front door and the buzz in system that had broken years ago and the rugs worn down to the bare wood beneath. He felt the chill in the air and shivered, hunched his shoulders around his ears, shoved his hands in his pockets. One hit. That was all he needed.

He went up to the kid's apartment, knocked on the door and then heard the excited barking of the pit bull named Honey, and he heard James rousing himself from the couch and stumbling to unlock the door, hushing Honey.

"Who is it?" James said before the last lock was undone.

"Brad,"

The door swung open and he saw James, unshaven, rumbled clothes, hair sticking up.

"Hey, man," Brad said, coming in, standing in the center of the living room. The living room had an old couch James had salvaged from the side of the road and a coffee table that looked like it was already junk in the sixties and a T.V. that was this huge box, so old.

"What do you want?" James said, and it wasn't unkind.

"Whatever, man, I have fifty, so whatever,"

And he got his stuff, his hit of heroin and some more for later, and he took it to a dark corner of James' apartment and he shot it up, thinking of feeling better, of that one moment of feeling better.

Megan was waiting for him, and he wanted to go back to her, wanted to please her if he could, but pleasing people was beyond him now. He could only please himself.

Walking back, the sun bright and incriminating, feeling better but he knew it was fleeting. What did he have to offer this girl? Drugs and violence and shit? Nothing? No future and no security and he knew in his heart that she should run from him. He knew it. He knew he was too damaged to ever put back together again.

"You're back," she said, smiling, her voice tentative. He smiled and nodded at her, took her hand. He could change. He could turn over a new leaf right now. No more drugs. No more doing them or selling them. He could go straight. He could get his GED, take college classes, apply himself to something, do something, be something, be someone she could be proud of. He could do that right now. He took a deep breath, feeling the gentle swell of the heroin high, and he resolved to be better.

"What do you want to do today?" he said, feeling generous, magnanimous. It would be all about her. Her wish would be his command.

"I don't know. Go see a movie, maybe?" Her eyes shone up at him, clear blue like water, like the sky. The movies. He could do that.

"Sure, yeah. Let's go,"

Holding hands, and he tried to will himself to be different. He'd be nice, loving, normal, respectable. He knew people could be like that, and he'd always felt different from them, less than them. He was going to be one of them. By sheer willpower he would do it. The same way he had hardened himself to survive the drug ridden and violence plagued streets he would harden himself to being this type of person Megan deserved.

Let all his clients think he had died. They didn't matter. Let all his dealers think he had been arrested, he didn't care. It didn't matter what they thought.


End file.
